The PRIDE Study is a new longitudinal study by the t of California San Francisco. It is the first long-term study ever launched on LGBTQ health.

Long time readers may remember when I wrote about the Institute of Medicine report on LGBT health. I jokingly summarize it as “400 pages to say that we need more data.” With studies like The PRIDE Study, we can change that. We can get real, hard, high quality data on the health needs of our communities.

Knowing the health needs of our neighbors, lovers, and friends means we can have a real impact on their health.

As always, data collected as part of the study is kept confidential. You can opt out any time you want. You can also opt into additional studies that will be connected to The PRIDE Study.

So please — if you identify as LGBTQ and can spare 30 minutes a year, join The PRIDE Study.

And spread the word!

We’ll be back to our regular programming here at Open Minded Health next week.

Transgender youth are a special population. Because of the relative novelty of treatment at any age much less for youth, data are scarce. A recent review article examining the published data on transgender youth was published. Let’s take a look at what they found.

First, how about prevalence? How many youth self identify as transgender? There are very, very, few studies that get good numbers on this. One study in New Zealand found that 1.2% of secondary school children identified as transgender, and 2.5% weren’t sure about their gender.

As we well know, being a gender and sexual minority can often be associated with health disparities. And this review reports on that too. Identifying as transgender was associated with negative psychological health. Specifically, being bullied, having symptoms of depression, attempting self harm, and attempting suicide were all more common in transgender youth than in cisgender youth. How much of that was because of discrimination and how much was because of gender dysphoria was not explored.

Researchers have also found that being transgender and having autism appear to go together. No one is quite sure why yet. There’s still a lot of research to be done to figure that out.

One interesting difference in the literature stands out to me, though. It appears that transgender men are more likely to self harm and transgender women are more likely to be autistic. Among cisgender people, cis women are more likely to self harm and cis men are more likely to be autistic. There are theories for why that sex difference exists, but there’s little to no agreement. It could be related to social environments, hormones, the environment in the womb, or any number of other factors. But the observation that transgender men and women more resemble their sex than their gender for self harm and autism is worth investigating further.

What about the effects of hormone therapy for transgender youth? Especially puberty suppression, which is the unique factor for their treatment? As a reminder, the treatment of transgender youth is largely based on the Dutch model. At puberty, children go on puberty suppressing drugs. They then go on hormones (and thus begin puberty) at age 16 and are eligible for surgery at age 18. There are efforts to deliver cross-sex hormones earlier, but the Dutch model is the standard that most of the research is based on. A Dutch study found that the psychological health of transgender youth improved after surgery. Their psychological health even equalled that of their cisgender peers! The researchers also found that youth continued to struggle with body image throughout the time they were on puberty suppression only. But their self-image improved with hormone therapy and surgery. None of the children regretted transitioning. And they said that social transition was “easy”.

One challenge to that particular Dutch study is that the Dutch protocol excludes trans youth who have significant psychiatric issues. A young person with unmanaged schizophrenia, severe depression, or other similar issue wouldn’t be allowed to start hormones. So the research was only on relatively psychologically healthy youth to begin with. It’s difficult to say if that had an effect on the study’s results. It’s also difficult to say whether the psychological health of a trans youth is the cause or the result of their dysphoria. A trans youth with depression might well benefit from hormone therapy, after all.

There are multiple questions still unresolved when it comes to treating transgender children. Does puberty suppression have a long term effect on their bones? Are there long-term physical or psychological health effects of early transition? How should children with serious psychological conditions be treated (besides the obvious answer — with compassion)? And on, and on.

The medical and scientific communities are working on answering these questions. But it will take time. And in the mean time — physicians and families do they best they can with what information we have. If you have, or are, a transgender youth please consider participating in a study so we can do even better for children in the future.

On June 17, 2016 The Lancet, one of the UK’s most prestigious medical journals, published an entire series dedicated to global transgender health.

The World Professional Association for Transgender Health biennial conference happened over the weekend of June 17-21. I wasn’t able to go this time around, so I can’t report on it directly. But! It looks like it was a fabulous conference. Topics ranged from surgical techniques to cancer prevention to health and psychological care for transgender youth. You can see the schedule yourself.

The Pentagon has announced that it will begin allowing transgender people to openly serve in the US military next month. No details on what that means for veterans or formal military who were dismissed from service because of that status have yet been revealed. Source.

I’ve been saying for years now that the phrase “LGBT community” is insufficient when it comes to health. It’s not one community — it is multiple communities. The social issues and health issues that a gay transgender man faces every day are different from the issues a bisexual cisgender woman faces every day. There are some similarities and grouping the communities together has been politically useful. But it should never be forgotten that L, G, B, and T all face different types of health concerns and have different civil rights battles to face.

A study came out in August that has to be one of my favorites this year. Researchers in Georgia surveyed over three thousand lesbian, gay, bisexual, pansexual, transgender, gender non-conforming, and queer people. They asked about health behaviors of all kinds. And then they did statistical analysis, comparing the various genders (cis male, cis female, trans male, trans female, genderqueer) and sexual orientations (lesbian, gay, bisexual, pansexual, queer, straight). Let’s look at what they found!

Diet and exercise: The researchers asked about fatty foods, eating while not hungry, quantity of vegetables and fruits eaten, and about hours and types of exercise. Transgender women had the least healthy diet of all genders. As a group, they were less likely to eat many fruits and vegetables, and more likely to drink sugared drinks and eat when they weren’t hungry. Both cisgender and transgender men were also less likely to eat many vegetables compared with other groups. Genderqueer people and gay cisgender men were most likely to exercise.

Substance use: The researchers asked about smoking tobacco and alcohol consumption. Cisgender men were the most likely to drink alcohol, binge drink, and to drink even when they didn’t want to. Participants who identified as queer were also more likely to drink. When it came to tobacco, transgender men and straight participants were the most likely to smoke.

Motor vehicle risk: The researchers asked about seatbelt use, speeding, and texting while driving. No clear differences for speeding were noted. Transgender men and straight participants were most likely to drive without a seatbelt. Texting while driving varied considerably; gay and lesbian drivers were most likely to text while driving.

Sexual behaviors: The researchers asked about frequency of unprotected sex and sex while intoxicated. Gay men were least likely to have unprotected sex while lesbian women were most likely to have unprotected sex. When it came to sex while intoxicated, only the bisexual participants stood out as being most likely among the groups to have sex while intoxicated.

Violence: The researchers asked about self harm and expressing anger at others. Overall rates of interpersonal anger were very low. Transgender men and pansexual people were most likely to self harm.

Medical risk taking: The researchers asked about delaying medical care and not following physician advice. Transgender women were least likely to seek care; 1/3 reported that they regularly delayed seeking medical care. Both transgender women and transgender men were more likely to not follow medical advice when it was given. Bisexual people were also more likely to delay seeking medical care compared to lesbian and gay participants.

That’s a mouthful, right? There are a lot of details I left out of this summary and it still threatens to be overwhelming with detail. So how we can break this down even more simply? By talking about the conclusions.

The researchers go into some possible causes for all these different results. Maybe gay men are safer about sex because of HIV risk. Maybe transgender men eat few vegetables because of cultural expectations that “men eat lots of meat and not many vegetables.” Maybe gay and lesbian people text more while driving because of the lack of community-specific messages.

Maybe. And they’re all good thoughts.

I tend to look forward more to what we can do with these data. I’m pretty happy with this study — it’s one of the broadest I’ve seen for inclusion. Few health-oriented pieces of research include pansexual and genderqueer individuals.

It’s important to remember that these results are at the group level. Any individual person who is a gender/sexual minority will have their own health behaviors and risks. They should be evaluated and treated as individuals. From a public health perspective though, this research brings valuable data. Only by knowing what each group faces can prevention, screening, and treatment campaigns be created. Only by knowing, for example, that transgender and bisexual people avoid seeking medical care can we then examine “why?” and act to remove the barriers so that appropriate, respectful medical care is available.

So — can we change the conversation? Instead of talking about “the LGBT community”, let’s talk about “the LGBT communities”. Or, even better, “gender and sexual minority communities” — removing the alphabet soup and expanding the definitions at the same time. This research is only the tip of the iceberg. We have so much more to explore.

This is the start of a new series of posts here on Open Minded Health: Quickies! I often run into items in the medical literature that are too short to do a fully post on, but for whatever reason I think it’s worth covering it anyway.

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This week’s quickie is a case report, which was presented as a poster at a medical conference.

A trans woman in her thirties showed up at the emergency room with gastrointestinal problems. She had nausea, pain, and bleeding. No significant medical history was noted in the report, and she was on a normal dose of hormone therapy.

When they took her blood to run some lab tests, the sample appeared “as white and turbid as milk.”

Her lab work revealed a triglyceride level of 30,000 mg/dl. For reference, a normal triglyceride level is less than 150. Above 500 is considered “very high.”

She was immediately transferred to the intensive care unit for treatment. Triglycerides that high can cause inflammation of the pancreas. Thankfully all her pancreatic lab values were normal. After a week of treatment, which managed to get her triglycerides down to 3,000, she was sent home. She was instructed to stop estrogen treatment, take new prescribed triglyceride-lowering medications, and to follow up with her physician.

Why did the hospital physicians recommend that this patient stop her estrogen? Because estrogen treatment is known to increase triglyceride levels. Triglyceride levels that high are extremely rare. A much more mild version can, however, happen to anyone who has high estrogen levels. It can happen to cis women in pregnancy or receiving hormone replacement therapy for menopause. It can also happen to trans women on estrogen treatment.

High triglyceride levels are usually “silent” — there are no symptoms. That’s part of the reason it’s important to see a physician regularly for screening, especially if you’re at higher risk. High triglyceride levels are more likely if you…

are overweight

don’t exercise

eat a high-carbohydrate, high-fat diet

have other cardiovascular issues

are on certain medications

or if it runs in your family

Mild elevations in triglyceride levels may be controllable with diet, exercise, and weight control. If those don’t help, your physician may prescribe medications to lower your triglycerides.

For more information on triglycerides, including what they are, normal levels, and how to control them…check out this article by WebMD or ask your primary care provider.

What is Open Minded Health?

OMH is dedicated to providing information about gender and sexual minority health. Posts are a mix of the latest research, activity risk reduction tips, and the latest news.

This blog is definitely not suitable for children, and probably not work safe. It contains descriptions of sexual activities that may disturb some readers.

Also please be aware: I am not a doctor. OMH does not provide health care advice - the information here is to be used as information only. It does not substitute a visit to your health care provider. When in doubt, please ask your health care provider.

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